New House - Network, What Could Go Wrong?

What could possible be wrong with a network installed and dare I say "operated" by a lawyer?  Of course, the answer is just about anything.  When we saw the house, I was stunned to see the "wiring closet," a section of unfinished space where a spaghetti mess of UTP and COAX were tied, sometimes literally in knots with some terminated into female connectors, some with male connectors, some stripped back several inches, untrimmed ends pocking into other cables, and some undecipherable labels on a few cables.

My first step was to try to segregate the UTP (network and phone) cables from the multitude of COAX and trace them.  As each was traced it was labeled with a neat color coded tape label so I could skip the tracing next time.  When that was said and done, I was down to only about a dozen mystery cables.  The network cables were plugged into a switch that I literally zip tied on top of the box.  The coax cables went into a couple of bundles.

The result, definitely not pretty was an organized mess, something I could work to improve and I thought something that might help performance of the network.

Network Performance Failure

It was not long till my son tried to use his computer to play WoW and immediately discovered that the network was horrible, with disconnects and latency galore.  He fixed it by going to a wireless connection, bypassing some of the mess that is our wired network and let me know about it.  I thought I was retired, but I seem to have inherited another broken network.

New House - Kitchen, First Impressions

We just moved into our new house in Leesburg.  It has plenty of issues and I mean plenty.  The number of things needing attention are just overwhelming.  Perhaps the most important to us is the Kitchen, which we knew going in was a write off and rebuild proposition and nothing we have experienced so far has changed this impression.

Overall

The kitchen is dominated by black and white with some stainless thrown in all built on the omnipresent cherry hardwood floor which covers most horizontal surfaces in the house. It's also a mess, but that's a transient problem and a lot better than a day ago.

The cabinets are white, I would assume they’d be sleek, modern looking, but the doors are edged with a fancy curve and crowned with a compound arch, touches I would expect on a traditional wooden cabinet.  The doors have a cheap plastic feel and sound accordingly when closed. 

The countertop appears to be a high quality marble, nicely finished.  It’s black with some flecks of color, giving it a harsh contrast to the cabinets.

Appliance are mostly stainless steel following the current trend.  The exception is the built in oven, which is white.  I’d guess the oven is older, perhaps the only original component of the kitchen.

My overall impression on the kitchen is simply, yuck.

Parent/Child Debts and Major Crimes (TNT TV Show)

[Reposted from Facebook]

A few evenings ago, I watched an episode of "Major Crimes" (Personal Day)  that contained a scene that I found quite moving and worth commenting on.  The scene was at the end of the episode, a portion often devoted to the main character's (Sharon, played by Mary McDonald) personal life.   This episode followed the pattern. Her acquired charge, a mid-teen boy (Rusty), who witnessed a murder and came from a very troubled situation, including prostitution to survive, opened a serious conversation with Sharon, the only effective parent figure he has ever known.

Why Write This Blog & Why Is It Called That?

Why Write This Blog?

About a week ago a Facebook friend commented on one of my posts "thanks for the blog" that was quickly followed by my daughter telling me she thought I should write a blog.  Initially that seemed a silly idea, it still seems an odd one, after all, I am not all that "interesting" a person.  I don't see lots of  folks clamoring to know about me or to discuss issues with me.